Friday, August 04, 2017

The Underwater Search for Flight MH370

During the search for the missing aircraft Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 the Australian Transport Safety Bureau were responsible for conducting underwater search operations. Part of this search included a bathymetric survey to create a detailed map of the sea floor topography in the search area. In one of the largest marine surveys ever conducted the ATSB collected 710,000 square kilometres of bathymetric data.

The Australian Government has released an Esri Story Map, The Data Behind the Search for MH370, which explains where and why the underwater search for the missing aircraft took place. It also visualizes some of the bathymetric data collected during the search.

The data collected is some of the highest resolution bathymetric data ever collected for this area. The data was therefore useful not only for helping to direct the search for the missing aircraft but will be invaluable to marine scientists and scientists in other disciplines. The Australian government has therefore made the data freely available. You can download the data from marine.ga.gov.au.